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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Sen. Rick Santorum: Guest Blogger

Senator Rick Santorum takes the opportunity to be a guest blogger at Captain's Quarters.

Leaders with confused thinking such as his is what led to the disaster in Iraq. For instance, in an August speech to the Pennsylvania Press Club, he flagrantly and erroneously conflated the motives of modern Islamic radicals with the actions of the Ottoman empire back in 1683.

In September, when asked if we should have had more troops in Iraq, he made the astounding claim that many commanders wanted less troops! But he refused to offer any evidence.

Further, I distinctly remember my first exposure to his buffoonary, back in the 2000 election year, when he dragged General Shenseki before congressional hearings because one of his state's tracked military vehicle manufacturers wanted to reverse the Army's decision to use wheeled vehicles only.

The Army complained that the tests were unnecessary and would delay development of its new, lighter brigades.

"In my judgment," Shinseki wrote to the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, "such a comparison will provide marginal insights, while placing a significant drain on very limited resources, including money, time, readiness and soldiers."

The requirements were placed in the legislation largely at the insistence of Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate AirLand Forces Subcommittee. Santorum was up for reelection this year, and his state includes two factories of United Defense L.P. (UDLP), which makes the ArmyÂs 40-year-old line of medium-weight combat vehicles, the M-113 Armored Personnel Carrier.

We won't defeat Islamic extremists by countering them with Christian extremists like Rick Santorum, who lie and are willing to undermine the military solely for the purpose of pandering to special interests from the state of Pennsylvania.